Ruth Joffre was born and raised in Northern Virginia. Her mother was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, in 1950, and Ruth has taken her mother's maiden name to honor her. After leaving Virginia, Ruth earned her BA from Cornell University and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She now lives in Seattle, where she currently serves as the Hugo House Prose Writer-in-Residence and co-organizes the Fight for Our Lives performance series.

Ruth is the author of the story collection Night Beast, which was longlisted for The Story Prize. Her fiction and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon Review, Pleiades, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, The Masters Review, Lightspeed, Hayden's Ferry Review, Mid-American Review, Nashville Review, Copper Nickel, PANK, and elsewhere. Her fifteen-part interview series with the authors, editors, and curators of craft books and resources is freely available on the Kenyon Review blog.